Former teacher sentenced for sexual assault of young girl

Updated 11:41 pm, Monday, June 16, 2014

Former Brackenridge High School teacher Reyes Deleon (left) is led out of court at the CadenaReeves Justice Center as defense attorney Rodolfo Orta watches.

Former Brackenridge High School teacher Reyes Deleon (left) is led out of court at the CadenaReeves Justice Center as defense attorney Rodolfo Orta watches.

Photo: Timothy Tai / San Antonio Express-News

Former teacher sentenced for sexual assault of young girl

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A retired high school teacher who pleaded no contest last month to a charge that he was sexually inappropriate with a young girl was sentenced Monday to 15 years in prison.

Reyes Deleon, 58, was originally indicted on a charge of continuous sexual abuse of a child, which carries a minimum 25-year sentence. A plea agreement he signed last month downgraded the charge to aggravated sexual assault of a child, capping his punishment at 15 years and allowing for deferred adjudication probation as a sentencing option.

Judge Philip Kazen sentenced Deleon, who was seeking probation, to the maximum prison time the deal allowed.

Deleon was two weeks shy of retirement from Brackenridge High School in May 2012 when allegations surfaced about the abuse of a girl who was not a student there.

According to court files, the girl told police that Deleon started touching her inappropriately when she was 10 and that it continued until she was 13, when she told authorities.

She came forward only after Deleon made it clear that his intention was to have sex with the girl when she was older and asked for her to give him a pair of her underwear, documents state.

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Speaking on behalf of his client, defense attorney Rodolfo Orta told police that the girl made the false allegations after Deleon — who received a $110,000 lump sum retirement check — declined to buy the girl a Gucci purse, according to court files.

In a letter to the court, the girl wrote that her experiences with Deleon had traumatized her, leaving her with “horrible nightmares” and making her “afraid to be alone even with my father or brothers.”